When I was 22, I moved into a mansion with 11 other guys my age.
The house was tucked into a mountain pass, surrounded on all sides by Pikes National Forest. We agreed to a few rules: wearing the same clothes, spending most of our time in silence, keeping up the property, etc. We did this for a year.
It was a good experience, for many reasons. I read 82 books that year. I meditated twice daily. I wrote poetry. I composed prayers. I conducted a research project. I frolicked in nature. I wrote constantly.
While looking for something else that year, I made enormous progress in finding myself.
It feels like cheating, almost. Most people don't have an opportunity like that, to stop and reflect and listen to the voices around and within. To walk slowly under fir trees and breathe mountain air. They are simply poured into the world from the graduated cylinders of high school or college, frothy and unassayed. I had a chance to settle, and it changed me.
Yesterday, I happened across a file with several things I wrote that year. One thing made me smile, a short poem:
The man with no abode,
his days marked by waxing moons.
He wanders in search of greenest pastures
and eats richly of harvests he did not plant
but were planted for him.
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